Families in search of help after recent flood

By Grace Bauer

Windsorites with flooded basements are hopeful about the city’s involvement in relief from the recent record-breaking flood, while Tecumseh residents are left skeptical the city will do anything to help.

 

Windsor and Tecumseh were met with a downpour on Aug. 28 and 29. which dropped over 200 millimetres of water in a 24-hour time period. This left residents wondering whether or not cities would help with the flooding.

 

Matt and Andrea Reed are Windsor residents who are victims of the flood.

 

“We were having friends from Brazil stay with us in our basement at the time. We feel bad because they had a lot of their stuff in the basement when it was flooding,” said Andrea.

 

Matt and Andrea said that luckily they did not keep a lot of sentimental items in the basement, but the estimated costs of destroyed goods is around $9,000. Andrea said that they hope to take advantage of the help Windsor is providing, but is not exactly sure what the programs are.

 

Dwayne Dawson, executive director for the City of Windsor, said that any homeowner is eligible for some of the programs the city is providing for flood relief.

 

“We have a basement flooding subsidy program. The city will subsidize 100 per cent of funds up to $2,800 to repair and maintain backflow prevention,” said Dawson. “They will also look at sump pumps.”

 

Dawson said the amount of people seeking help for this years flood was more than doubled that of last year’s record-breaking rainfall.

 

Last year’s flood brought in about 2,000 calls and this years flood brought in over 6,000 calls, according to Dawson.

 

Dawson said that despite what some might think, the City of Windsor was as prepared as it could have been considering the circumstances.

 

“People talk about a ‘100 year storm’ which is 100 millimeters of rain in a 12 hr period. In Windsor we had areas that had over 100 millimeters of rain over the span of an hour and a half.”

 

Cierra Bray, CEO and owner of CGal Media in Windsor, saw the need for financial help and decided to raise $1,000 for a neighborhood in Windsor.

 

“I saw an article on CBC about two weeks ago and it was basically a call for help to raise money for these residents that had terrible flooding in their houses. In this case they were rented houses and a lot of families were low-income. I knew I needed to step up and help.”

 

Bray started a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising $1,000 in 24 hours. After about five days she raised over $2,000.

 

Mackenzie Baillargeon-Pegg, 20, a resident of Tecumseh is also a victim of the recent flood.

 

“I turned on the light and looked at my floor and there was water everywhere-probably up to my ankles at this point. All of my clothes were soaked, my bed frame was soaked, my dresser was soaked,” said Baillargeon-Pegg.

 

She said that the saddest part of the damage was the priceless, irreplaceable items like family pictures and files.

 

“Just to fix [the basement] alone is going to cost almost $20,000 and that’s not including any of the stuff we lost – all my shoes, clothes, my yoga mat, all of my grandma’s medical files,” Baillargeon-Pegg said. “We are dealing with the Town of Tecumseh right now and they actually did nothing at all to help us. My grandma is actually filing a class-action lawsuit against them with one of our neighbours and the lawyer said that unless you get more neighbours involved, just the two of you is not really going to do much.”

 

The Town of Tecumseh’s website does not refer to any help being offered with flood relief. The only resources on the website are about last year’s flood.

 

Dawson said that the City of Windsor is taking this opportunity to grow and change with the times. The city is looking for ways to improve its drainage systems and has developed a plan to change them in order to prevent flooding on this scale.

 

“We’re trying to make small gains – small wins,” said Dawson.